In video production, use of material data having a little history of processing (number of generations) among the material data is important for the production of a high quality final product (complete package data).
This is because, in almost all processing, intermediate material data produced in the process is temporarily recorded on a recording medium, so there are cases where the quality of the material deteriorates each time.
That is, when the material data is analog data needless to say, but also when it is digital data, if encoding (compressing) and decoding (decompressing) the material data with each write and read operation of the material data with respect to the recording medium as in an SDI (bit-serial digital interface) environment, the quality of the material data will definitely deteriorate.
For example, consider a case of processing certain original material data a plurality of times. If successively processing it and temporarily storing the intermediate material data on for example magnetic tape at every processing, the finally obtained complete package data will be copied the same number of times as the times of processing even with respect to parts not processed at all, so the quality of the entire complete package data will be greatly lowered.
Such a situation frequently occurs when production is by trial and error etc.
In the past, however, generation information of intermediate material data has not been managed at all or, even if it was managed, was separated from the material per se and manually managed, so generation information has not been effectively utilized in the production of the high quality complete package data.
On the other hand, in an environment where all material data used and generated in production of a series of complete package data is centrally managed, desirably a unique identifier is embedded in each material data and meta-data comprised of various types of information concerning the material data is stored in a database using the given identifier as a main search item.
Further, information on the history of processing which has been applied to for example certain material data has become an important item of such meta-data.
In such an environment, however, when the processing history information of certain material data is required, it is necessary to inquire at the database each time using the identifier provided as a search key.
When the material data is the original material, however, this means that no processing has been applied, so such an inquiry itself becomes useless.